The Secret
by Marathon Zack 140.6
Summary: Sheldon and Penny have an unexpected secret. SHENNY One-Shot. Plenty of Leonard bashing ahead. Don't like, don't read.


**A/N: It's amazing what one can do when one is _supposed_ to be doing other, more important things. Just a little short that turned out to be longer than I expected once I got going.**

 **Special nod to medusa20's "The Nuptial Negation" which gave me this idea (available on AO3). Go read it, it's a great story.**

* * *

Sheldon and Penny were sitting on Sheldon's couch, immersed in watching "Doctor Strange," when Leonard, Howard and Raj burst in, arguing. Well, Leonard and Howard were arguing, it was hard to tell whether Raj had been arguing, since as soon as he saw Penny, he went mute. Penny and Sheldon's focus remained glued to the tv, ignoring the newcomers.

"Anything is possible," insisted Leonard. "It may not be probable, and it may never happen, but it is still theoretically possible."

"Absolutely not!" Howard vehemently disagreed. "Most things are possible. Some things, however, are absolutely, totally, and in all other ways inconceivable!"

"Give me one example that is absolutely impossible," retorted Leonard.

Howard looked around him, thinking, when his eyes rested on Sheldon and Penny, who were still sitting on the couch watching the movie, ignoring the boys.

"All right; Penny and Sheldon getting married. We can all agree that is not merely improbable, but impossible."

Everyone turned to look at the pair, who, without taking their eyes off the screen, simultaneously raised their left hands; bands on each of their fourth digits caught the light and sparkled. Three jaws simultaneously dropped.

Raj was the first to regain control, and sat down on the couch next to Penny. Penny and Sheldon both held out their hands for him to investigate.

On Penny's finger was a silver band, with brightly colored stones set in it, of all but two colors; green and blue. In the very center, where a diamond would normally sit, was a dual colored stone, split perfectly down the middle. A brilliant blue on the left, and a bright, flashing green on the right.

On Sheldon's finger was a gold band, with ancient lettering of a dark reddish-orange stone carved into the face all the way around, that almost looked as if they were glowing. This one Raj immediately recognized. There was, after all, only one ring that looked like that.

Glancing back up at the other two, Raj shrugged his shoulders, giving them a tight smile. Looked legit to him.

After several more seconds of gaping, Leonard finally found his voice; " _What the FRAK!?_ "

Sheldon calmly reached for the remote, and hit pause; both of them looked up at Leonard and Howard.

"I think it's pretty obvious. The cultural significance of a ring on the fourth digit of the left hand is widely known," he replied.

"You're married? Actually, seriously, legally married? To each other?" asked Howard, pointing between them. "This isn't some kind of _Bazinga_?"

"Of course not! I may enjoy a good joke every now and then, but I would never joke about something as serious as marriage."

"When did this happen?" asked Leonard, collapsing into his chair.

Penny answered this one. "A week ago."

Raj whispered in Howard's ear. "Raj says there's no way you've been wearing those rings for a week without any of us noticing, and I agree. You certainly did not have that ring on Halo night last week."

Penny replied with a smile, "You're right. We couldn't agree on a matching set of rings, so we each came up with designs for what we thought the rings should look like. As soon as I saw Sheldon's design for my ring, I fell in love with it. So in exchange, I let him get the ring he wanted from the very beginning. They don't match, but then again we don't exactly match according to most people, either," she said, smiling up at the lanky physicist beside her.

"Sheldon had them both custom made, and they just came in today. He named this one the Penny Blossom Ring. The outer stones are for all the color Penny Blossom's we've made together, and the center stones perfectly match each of our eyes.

"And I think you can all recognize The One Ring. His original idea for my ring was Nenya, Lady Galadriel's ring, to match his, but I thought this one was more me, so he got this one."

"Actually…" Sheldon replied, standing up and heading to his room, before returning almost immediately, and handing her an ornate wooden box, with recognizable symbols carved on the side.

Penny looked up at him in shock, before slowly opening the box. Light glistened off the silver band and diamond stones.

"It's not mithril and adamant; silver and diamond were the best I could do. I thought it might be less ostentatious for formal gatherings. Which will unfortunately be a side effect when I win the Nobel Prize."

Penny gasped, before throwing her arms around him, and kissing him on the lips.

Up until this point, Leonard had been holding out that this was all some elaborate prank being pulled by the two of them. When they kissed, and Sheldon not only didn't pull away, but wrapped his arms around her and kissed back, the reality of it hit him. As their lips separated, he exploded, standing up and attempting (and failing miserably) to tower over his much taller roommate.

"Sheldon, she's mine! I saw her first! You knew that! You can't steal her away from me!"

Sheldon stepped right into Leonard's personal space, and rose to his full height, towering over Leonard. "And this is exactly why we didn't tell you," he said in calm, deadly tone. "We knew how you would react, that you would do anything to sabotage our relationship, and when it became such, our marriage. You sabotaged my work in the Arctic. You tried to friend-block me after you and Penny broke up, trying to sabotage my friendship with her, which was purely platonic at the time, and had existed long before the two of you started dating. You whined on the very first day we met her when she took interest in my whiteboard and stopped paying attention to you for two seconds, trying to redirect her attention back to yourself. You lied to her and tricked her into going on a date with you, and demand that I lie to her if she asked why I wasn't there. You abandoned your pursuit of her every time a new girl showed up, be it Leslie, Missy, Stephanie, Alicia, Priya, or anyone else. You have lusted after her since you first laid eyes on her, your only reason for introducing yourself in the first place was in hopes of having sex with her eventually. And she is certainly not "yours", she is a human being, not some object you can lay claim to, especially when the last time you dated her was over two years ago. And now you are proving our hypothesis correct that you would attempt to sabotage this as well. So you can either support us or not, it quite honestly doesn't matter, we are married till death do us part."

Leonard quailed under the calm onslaught of his roommate.

Looking up at Howard and Raj, he said in a more apologetic tone, "We apologize for keeping the two of you out of the loop, but we couldn't risk Leonard accidentally finding out. It also happened rather quickly. We both realized that we were always there for each other, always had each other's backs, and always would. Sharing things with each other that we never shared with anyone else. I have always been willing to touch her, and let her come into physical contact with me much more than I eve have with anyone else I wasn't related to. So while we didn't officially date for long, we have in a sense been dating ever since she moved into the apartment across the hall, and we both realized we didn't want to live our lives without the other one being there with us."

Before Leonard could say or do anything stupid, Howard quickly asked, "So when were you going to tell us, and if you've been married, why haven't you been living together?"

Penny fielded this one. "We were waiting for the rings to come in before we announced it. We knew people would doubt it if we just told people we were married, without rings to back it up; although Sheldon has been carrying around a copy of the marriage certificate. So we decided to announce it once we got the rings, as further proof that we are married, since we knew _some_ people wouldn't accept it. We were planning on telling everyone tonight, you just happened to bring up the perfect opportunity for us to show you instead of merely telling you. Anyway, it was only a week to wait. And we obviously couldn't live together without Leonard finding out."

"So what happens now?" Howard asked cautiously, as he eased his way in front of Leonard, who was still eyeing daggers at Sheldon, even though they were no longer standing toe to toe.

"Well, we tell both of our parents that we're married later tonight, and I will stay at Penny's apartment tonight, as stipulated by the roommate agreement on overnight female visitors. Then we leave for our honeymoon tomorrow morning, allowing everyone time to absorb the news and come to terms with it. It also allows me to give Leonard the time notice required by the roommate contract that Penny will be moving into my room with me.

"When we get back, my mom will most likely force us to have 'an official wedding'. Which you are all of course invited to. And after that I will resume my progress towards the Nobel Prize."

While Sheldon had been talking to Howard, Leonard had stormed over to his desk, and pulled out the roommate contract. He stormed back over to Sheldon, and tore up the contract in front of him, snarling, "Forget it! I'm out of here, the apartment's yours," before storming out the door.

"Although it appears as if Leonard may choose not to attend the wedding," Sheldon said, looking at the door Leonard had slammed behind him. Turning back to Raj and Howard, he said, "Make sure he doesn't try to steal any of my stuff if he does in fact move out. But hopefully he will come to accept this before the wedding, and will be willing to attend. I have no desire to lose his friendship, despite our conflicts, as we have been friends for many years, and he is part of the group."

"We'll talk to him, try to calm him down while you're gone," said Howard, as Raj nodded his head in agreement. "We both wish you the best, and see you when you get back from your honeymoon," he added as him and Raj left, to give the newlyweds the evening alone.

* * *

 **A/N: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. ;)**

 **So that's what I think their rings would look like.**

For Sheldon's speech to Leonard, refer to (these are especially for you, guest reviewer "leonard rocks"):

1:1 - "I have a board. If you like boards, this is my board."

1:1 - "That's not to say that if a carnal relationship were to develop that I wouldn't participate. However briefly."

1:3 - Leslie

1:3 - Trick Date, demanding Sheldon lie - "By the way, if it should ever come up, you didn't join us because you stuffed yourself with a chicken carbonara sub at Quizznos."

1:15 - Missy

2:8 - Stephanie

2:19 - Alicia

3:1 - Arctic Betrayal

3:20 - Friend-blocked

4 - Pirya

And for good measure, even though they don't occur in this timeline:

7:1 - Leonard cheated on Penny, kissing another girl when out on the North Seas while dating Penny (Revealed in 8:24)

7:1 - Leonard showed the entire crew of said boat the movie with Penny topless, that she most certainly had not given him permission to show anyone.


End file.
